Many pairs of English and Norse words coexisted giving us two words with the same or slightly differing meanings. Examples below.

Norse

English

anger

wrath

nay

no

fro

from

raise

rear

ill

sick

bask

bathe

skill

craft

skin

hide

dike

ditch

skirt

shirt

scatter

shatter

skip

shift

In 1066 the Normans conquered Britain. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English. More pairs of similar words arose.

French

English

close

shut

reply

answer

odour

smell

annual

yearly

demand

ask

chamber

room

desire

wish

power

might

ire

wrath / anger

Somewords for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison).

The Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was eventually displaced by the French method of making plurals: adding an s (house, houses; shoe, shoes). Only a few words have retained their Germanic plurals: men, oxen, feet, teeth, children.

French also affected spelling so that the cw sound came to be written as qu (eg. cween became queen)